The present disclosure relates generally to food waste disposers, and more particularly, to grinding mechanisms for food waste disposers.
Food waste disposers are used to comminute food scraps into particles small enough to safely pass through household drain plumbing. A conventional disposer includes a food conveying section, a motor section, and a grinding mechanism disposed between the food conveying section and the motor section. The food conveying section includes a housing that forms an inlet for receiving food waste and water. The food conveying section conveys the food waste to the grinding mechanism, and the motor section includes a motor imparting rotational movement to a motor shaft to operate the grinding mechanism.
The grind mechanism that accomplishes the comminution is typically composed of a rotating shredder plate with lugs and a stationary grind ring. The motor turns the rotating shredder plate and the lugs force the food waste against the grind ring where it is broken down into small pieces. Once the particles are small enough to pass out of the grinding mechanism, they are flushed out into the household plumbing.
FIG. 1 illustrates a typical grinding mechanism 10. The illustrated grinding mechanism 10 includes a grinding plate 12 with swivel lugs 14 and a stationary grind ring 16. The grinding plate 12 is mounted to the motor shaft 18. The grind ring 16, which includes a plurality of notches 20 defining spaced teeth 21, is fixedly attached to an inner surface of a housing 22.
In the operation of the food waste disposer, the food waste delivered by the food conveying section to the grinding mechanism 10 is forced by the swivel lugs 14 against the teeth 21 of the grind ring 16. The edges of the teeth 21 grind the food waste into particulate matter sufficiently small to pass from above the grinding plate 12 to below the grinding plate 12 via gaps between the rotating and stationary members. Due to gravity, the particulate matter that passes through the gaps between the teeth 21 drops onto the upper end frame 24 and, along with water injected into the disposer, is discharged through a threaded discharge outlet 26. Size control is primarily achieved through controlling the size of the gap through which the food particles must pass.
This type of grinding, however, is much more effective on friable materials than on fibrous materials. Long fibrous and leafy food waste particulates often have escaped the grinding and cutting process in known disposer designs, resulting in longer and larger particulates escaping to the sink trap. This creates problems such as plugged traps and plugged plumbing. Known designs that may be more effective on these types of food wastes are often too costly to mass-produce.
The present application addresses these shortcomings associated with the prior art.